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Friday, July 27, 2007 12:00 AM

The most dangerous metaphor

Moore's Law inspires runaway techno-utopianism, leaking far beyond the world of semiconductors. What happens if the music stops?

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  • Sunday, July 29, 2007 09:23 PM

    The Problem is Way Bigger Than This

    Honestly, Moore's law I think is more aptly considred as a metaphor for our whole economny. Late modern capitalism is predicated on the continual growth of the economy. Without growth, the economy fails. Obviously there are finite limits to how much an economy can grow.

    Our economy is limited by the size of the earth, the amount of resources, the limits of productivity that can extracted from a single individual (or computer chip). Eventually this econimic system will fail and it will be a big disaster. This is why the idea of sustainability goes far beyond simply a way of protecting the environment. Sustainability posits a fundamentally different sort of economy. We need to get this right or sooner or later we're just going to use up all our resources and die.

    That aside, I think it would be good, at least for a while, to have a momentary pause in the inexorable movement of Moore's Law. It would force the software side of things to get radically streamlined. Right now, because of ever increasing processor speeds, people can be sloppy with bloated software, which consumes the extra processor speed faster than it can be developed. The way programs are written needs to be changed.

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